In what may be viewed as a case of "better late than never," social media influencer and YouTuber Logan Paul appears to be making good on a promise he made one full year ago to refund any "players" of his cryptocurrency game CryptoZoo.
CryptoZoo was an ill-fated 2021 project led and hyped by Paul in which people could dump money into the game for the promise of rare animal hybrid JPEGs that would presumably be worth a fortune (this was the era of NFTs, remember).
Users quickly figured out that these supposedly super cool JPEGs were just mish-mashed stock photos, and more concerningly, they couldn't extract money from the game once they'd put it in.
In December 2022, YouTuber Coffeezilla posted an extensive investigation into the CryptoZoo scam, and the negative press caused Paul to promise anyone who invested money into CryptoZoo their money back.
Paul promised the CryptoZoo Discord refunds totaling $1.8 million. Months, and eventually an entire year, went by with no refunds, much to the anger of investors and onlookers, until yesterday when Paul announced he set up a website to repay CryptoZoo investors $2.3 million.
Today, I am incredibly happy to announce that I am delivering on my promise to buy back Base Egg and Base Animal CryptoZoo NFTs for their original purchase price. This buy-back program is being carried out at https://t.co/XIQzLAGKiG. Claims can be submitted through this site… pic.twitter.com/VMPDHvdXkq
— Logan Paul (@LoganPaul) January 4, 2024
The lengthy tweet also says CryptoZoo will never come out (which is not much of a surprise to anyone following the controversy), and that Paul is filing a lawsuit against "bad actors" who stole Paul's money and sabotaged the game.
Paul may be referring to the developers of the game, who claimed in Coffeezilla's video that they were never paid by Paul and refused to release the code until they'd received their payment.
Reactions to the news focused largely on YouTube commentators who had kept the CryptoZoo story alive through the year that Paul did not make good on his promise of a refund.
Some of Paul's fans gloated that YouTubers like Coffeezilla could no longer make content about the scandal, while others said that the situation would never have been resolved were it not for the commentary community on YouTube keeping the heat on Paul.
